The mother of the 32-year-old woman who was killed amid violence in Charlottesville, Va., earlier this month launched a foundation honoring her late daughter.
Mother of Charlottesville Victim Launches Foundation to Give Scholarships to Law, Education, Social Justice Students
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The Heather Heyer Foundation will use funds drawn from donations and GoFundMe to give give scholarships to students interested in pursuing law, education and social justice issues, among other topics, Hill reported.
Heyer's mother Susan Bro spoke in detail about the foundation for the first time in an interview with The New York Times.
“I want to continue her message of paying attention to what’s going on around you," Bro said.
"Don’t hide your head in the sand. Notice that people are having difficulties and then be accountable in whatever actions you chose so that you can look yourself in the mirror and say, ‘I did the right thing," she continued.
Heather Heyer died earlier this month when a car rammed into a group of demonstrators in Charlottesville who were protesting a white supremacist rally.
President Trump later stirred controversy when he said "both sides" were responsible for the violence
Bro said earlier this month that she did not want to speak with Trump in the wake of the tragedy.
"I have not and now I will not," she said, adding, "I'm sorry, after what he said about my child. It's not that I saw somebody else's tweets about him. I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters, like Ms. Heyer, with the KKK and the white supremacists."
Bro is standing by her previous statement that she still would not speak with Trump.
“At this point, I feel like it would be a political maneuver, which I have no desire to participate in,” she told the Times.
A multi-racial coalition of faith, student and community activists will march more than 100 miles from Charlottesville, Virginia, to D.C. in response to what they call President Donald Trump's failure to confront the white supremacy on display at a violent rally in the Virginia city earlier this month.
10-Day March Against White Supremacy to Head From Charlottesville to DC
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The March to Confront White Supremacy starts Monday, Aug. 28 and is expected to end in D.C. on Wednesday, Sept. 6, NBC reported.
"We are marching from Charlottesville to Washington, DC to demonstrate our commitment to confronting white supremacy wherever it is found," the website for the march says. "It's clear that we can no longer wait for Donald Trump or any elected official to face reality and lead. We are coming together to reckon with America’s long history of white supremacy, so that we can begin to heal the wounds of our nation."
The list of organizations involved in the march includes the Women's March, The Movement for Black Lives, AFL-CIO and Democracy Spring, the site said.
Participants will walk as much as 17 miles per day and sleep in churches along the route. The march is set to pass through Ruckersville, Culpeper, Manassas, Fairfax and Falls Church, an online timeline said.
Organizers say white supremacist violence, rhetoric and policies have intensified since Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and must be confronted. They say they want a political agenda "that repairs the damage done" by the legacy of white supremacy in America.
The Rev. Al Sharpton organized more than 1,000 religious leaders from multiple faiths to rally Monday in Washington, D.C., saying he hopes to show that opposition to President Trump is not merely a political reproach, but also a moral one.
Religious Leaders Plan Anti-Trump Rally in DC on Monday
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The “One Thousand Ministers March for Justice” in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial will come on the 54th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his famed “I Have a Dream” speech, Mercury News reported.
The rally was planned long before a deadly white supremacist protest earlier this month in Charlottesville, although Sharpton said the events in Virginia only intensified the mission of Monday’s march.
“Charlottesville gave it a new energy, and a lot of ministers called in saying that this is the time to make a moral statement,” Sharpton said. “The president called for unity, and we are going to show unity. The question is, which side is the president on?”
According to National Park Service permits, the rally will start at 10 a.m. near the MLK Memorial at West Potomac Park-Polo Field on the National Mall.
The rally will include a prayer vigil and ceremony in which leaders will “recommit to being at the forefront of social justice and civil rights,” the permit states. Participants then will march to the Department of Justice.
Sharpton’s National Action Network organization is planning the rally, which will be attended by Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith leaders. Former Barack Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and King’s older son, Martin Luther King III, also are expected to attend.
“We want to convene ministers from all faiths to make a moral statement that no matter what party is in office, there are certain moral things that should be nonnegotiable,” Sharpton said. “That is voting rights, health care, criminal justice reform and economic justice.”
In the wake of the Charlottesville protest, in which a white supremacist rallygoer allegedly drove his car through a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one woman, Trump received condemnation from both parties after he said there was blame on “many sides” for the deadly violence. Under pressure the next day, he condemned neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan by name, but later seemed to defend his original remarks.
Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said it’s critical for Jewish leaders to have a presence at Monday’s rally. Pesner was one of many rabbis who said he would not participate in an annual conference with the president ahead of the Jewish High Holidays because of Trump’s Charlottesville remarks.
He said Jews marched 5,000 years ago out of Egypt, they marched with Martin Luther King Jr. 54 years ago and would be marching Monday against Trump. More than 200 Jewish leaders are expected to march Monday, Pesner said.
“We Jews will march for 5,000 more years if that’s what it takes to make sure that all people experience compassion and justice and equality,” Pesner said. “We know that it’s our jobs as Jews to always show up and beat back the forces of white supremacy, racism and hate of all forms.”
Trump and Sharpton, two prominent New Yorkers, have a long and public history. During the 1989 Central Park jogger case, Sharpton stood by five black teens who were accused of attacking a white female jogger in Central Park. Trump, in an open letter published as an ad in The New York Times and other newspapers, called for the teens to be sentenced to death.
The teens were exonerated in 2002 after another man confessed to the crime.
Trump and Sharpton, according to Sharpton, have “always had an adversarial political relationship.” “It’s fair to say that we are doing this march because the basic tenants of Dr. King’s dream are at risk now by the policies being promoted by this administration,” Sharpton said. “Trump has kept the bust of Dr. King in his office, but what about the dream of Dr. King?”
More than a thousand people protested a right-wing group in the US city of San Francisco, condemning white supremacy and bigotry.
Thousands Hold Victory Protest against Far Right in US City of San Francisco
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The protesters showed up to Alamo Square Park despite the cancellation of a rally and press conference by the right-wing Patriot Prayer group after officials walled off the area, Al Jazeera reported.
"Right now, this is victory," protester Benjamin Sierra said during the rally. "They did not have enough gumption to do what they set out to do," he told AP.
On Friday, Joey Gibson, the leader of Patriot Prayer, cancelled the so-called Freedom Rally over fears of a "huge riot". He said the group would instead hold a press conference on Saturday in Alamo Square Park.
But after police erected a fence around the park earlier in the day on Saturday to screen people as they entered, Gibson announced the event would be held indoors at a different location.
According to local media, Gibson eventually showed up to Crissy Field, the site of the originally scheduled rally, with about two dozen supporters.
They were eventually confronted by counterprotesters before leaving the area.
The Patriot Prayer leader has recently denounced white supremacy, but the group's rallies in the past have attracted white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members and others from a number of right-wing organisations, leading to violent confrontations with counterprotesters.
Many activists and rights groups have said Patriot Prayer seeks to provoke chaos and violence, especially because it often chooses to hold areas in more liberal communities.
A number of politicians, both at the local and national level, repeatedly voiced concerns that the previously scheduled event by the Patriot Prayer group would lead to clashes with counterprotesters.
The San Francisco Bay Area is considered a cradle for freedom of speech, and police in San Francisco have traditionally given demonstrators a wide berth.
However, after a man with links to a white supremacist group rammed his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters, killing a 32-year-old woman in Charlottesville, Virginia earlier this month, San Francisco police and civil leaders began to rethink their response to protests.
Gibson criticized the city's move to wall off the park as an attempt to silence his group's message.
But the city's mayor, Ed Lee, defended the decision, saying that "if people want to have a stage in San Francisco, they better have a message that contributes to people's lives rather than find ways to hurt them".
Outside Alamo Square Park, protesters chanted, "Whose streets? Our streets" as they waved signs denouncing hate and bigotry.
More than a thousand others took to the streets in the city's Castro neighborhood.
Hundreds had also protested on Friday under the banner 'United Against Hate'.
"San Francisco as a whole, we are a liberal city and this is not a place for hate or any sort of bigotry of any kind," protester Bianca Harris said.
"I think it's a really powerful message that we're sending to people who come here to try to spew messages of hate that it's just not welcome in this city."
Online, many used #NoHateInTheBay, #SFrally and #UniteAgainstHate to condemn white supremacy and racism.